The Palace Cafe

We sit here with our backs to the wall and drink to all the things we should have done before Armageddon fell upon this town. We think we know it well, the mountainous cloud that bore the very soul away, its winds whipping roofs away, walls. It took the wives we swore to God we'd love forever, honor, and sing the seasons to. And took our sons. And then our farms. There was total nothing on the wing but cloud and wind. If we are lucky when the waitress comes, coffee in hand, she might say a word that will take our minds up wind from this stinking town, what's left of it. But we do not know it well: the changing sky does not allow forecast. The winds that hit us in the back that day filled the blank eyes on the square with debris. The Palace lost its shade, the window and a rack of pies gone without a trace. The tornado cost the Sabre Jet a wing, the park its trees and tulips that survived the last hard frost.

With all the loss you'd think we'd want to leave the state. We stay with nothing like we want, save The Palace where we don't have to serve.